It's very common to denounce the "digging ditches" fallacy as an absurd way for keynesianists to try to improve work market by offering useless jobs.

I think there is also some kind of useless intellectual work which is used in current bureaucracies and technocracies.

I saw once a movie which was quite subversive, and was trying to question the very basic fondations of our societies. In a scene, several friends were talking about theirs jobs during a dinner. One of them was criticized for its job of physician, and for the huge amount of money he was "earning". At some point, he said something like :

"During our youth, we studied hard to gain our diplomas. It's normal that we now get a reward for that."

This is a strange conception of economics. It sounds that for him, a good salary is a right you earn once with some work, and that is perpetually yours after that. As if intellectual superiority during youth could be a way to obtain a privilegde of being paid every day not for what has been done during this day, but for what was done a long time ago.

Knowledge is not a way to acquire the right not to comply to economic rules. It is supposed to be a way to accomplish oneself, and hopefully to create wealth while doing so.

Sometimes it seems to me that intellectual elites think that there is just no way to earn one's life decently in a free market. Therefore, they think they should organize a way to recognize each other by distinguishing smart young people, in order to give them the right to finance their way of life via taxation and thus by the use of public force.

Of course, this is absurd, because all this brain power is not used for what it is, but just as a way to obtain something that can very much be considered as a priviledge. This is a waste of intellectual resource, but above all, a huge injustice.

PS. Here in France, for instance, 56% of the GDP directly comes from state spending. Some polls showed that 70% of young people would like to become a state employee. And of course, but this is just an impression I've got, it seems to me that as in many countries in the world, the professions that are associated to social success are mostly those who are not related to economics reality (not complying to offer and demand, but to state subvention or direct funding) : physicians, lawers, teachers and such.

Pphysicians' brainpower are wasted. They should be used for scientific research. Train a diagnostician nurse to do the day to day task.

Lawyers could be useful if they help defend you from evil dudes. However, some lawyers are connected with politicians who make laws for the lawyers to make money from.

Teachers with a "teaching degree" are the most useless kind of teachers. They don't apply the scientific method, look for constant feedback, and generally don't know much else unless they're a professor of some kind. Even so, professors are continuously distracted by the research process and getting grants for their research.

PS. Here in France, for instance, 56% of the GDP directly comes from state spending. Some polls showed that 70% of young people would like to become a state employee. And of course, but this is just an impression I've got, it seems to me that as in many countries in the world, the professions that are associated to social success are mostly those who are not related to economics reality (not complying to offer and demand, but to state subvention or direct funding) : physicians, lawers, teachers and such.

Well, it's mathmaticly impossible for everyone to have a 'secure' government job. Protesting, striking and rioting is a result of the belief that the government is the primary source of wealth, and it is only by the greed of the elite that said wealth isn't distributed evenly. There is an old saying in America (and I suspect elsewhere) "there is no such thing as a free lunch". It means that, even if something is free to you, someone has to pay for it. In the case of the French, the government gets the money to pay for public largesse from taxing it's own people. It's a vicious circle, and the strikers are harming the lower classes for the 'right' of living off of the younger working classes for a difference of two years.

This is also why you will not see the same kinds of striking in the US, because once we are out in the streets it's going to be bloody.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

PS. Here in France, for instance, 56% of the GDP directly comes from state spending. Some polls showed that 70% of young people would like to become a state employee. And of course, but this is just an impression I've got, it seems to me that as in many countries in the world, the professions that are associated to social success are mostly those who are not related to economics reality (not complying to offer and demand, but to state subvention or direct funding) : physicians, lawers, teachers and such.

Well, it's mathmaticly impossible for everyone to have a 'secure' government job. Protesting, striking and rioting is a result of the belief that the government is the primary source of wealth, and it is only by the greed of the elite that said wealth isn't distributed evenly. There is an old saying in America (and I suspect elsewhere) "there is no such thing as a free lunch". It means that, even if something is free to you, someone has to pay for it. In the case of the French, the government gets the money to pay for public largesse from taxing it's own people. It's a vicious circle, and the strikers are harming the lower classes for the 'right' of living off of the younger working classes for a difference of two years.

This is also why you will not see the same kinds of striking in the US, because once we are out in the streets it's going to be bloody.

Remember, the French are nuts and prone to collective madness. Gald that they didn't have their own hitler figure. It would be really fricking bad and much worse than the German.

The French revolution is an example of French lunacy. They even celebrate it!

Even if that was true, 100 scientists that accomplish great things can not be used as an excuse to pay 10,000 others (amongst them not all are scientists) who actually don't do anything for society. Or at least, not at a fair price, since they use public force to finance their salary.

Basically the question is whether or not you would accept someone to tell you :

" I am an officialy recognized scientist, and you're not. Give me 10% of your savings now because I earned the right not to cope with economic reality. If you don't agree I'll tell the police and they will take it by force. "

Also : this is not just about scientists. A young person becomes a bureaucrat by learning by heart many silly and unfair rules. His only merit as a bureaucrat is to be able to memorize all this crap.

Basically genjix is talking about how important it is for human kind to explore solar system. I'm telling him that it is just some technocratic propaganda, and it should not be founded using taxation.

I also told him that the moon and Mars are nothing but giant desertic places. And nobody wants to live in a desertic land.

Going to Mars and trying to live there is about as weird as going to the south pole and establishing a permanent camp there.

I suggest trying to build a dyson sphere that absorb the entire energy of the sun instead. With the dyson sphere, we'll build more and more desirable space to live using the entire resources of the solar system.

I suggest trying to build a dyson sphere that absorb the entire energy of the sun instead. With the dyson sphere, we'll build more and more desirable space to live using the entire resources of the solar system.

So we'll have to master interstellar travel because we don't have enough matter in our own solar system to build a dyson sphere.